


Communication Breakdown

by kelstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 12x23 spoilers, 12x23: All Along the Watchtower spoilers, Claire is blunt, Dean is not good at dealing with emotions, I wrote this at 2am and it's not beta'd I'm sorry, Kind of a fix it fic I guess?, M/M, SEASON 12 FINALE SPOILERS, Sam is awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 16:05:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11062404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelstiel/pseuds/kelstiel
Summary: So here’s the thing, Claire has long since accepted that her father, James Novak, is dead. And sure, Castiel tried to fill his shoes and play daddy to her but in her opinion, it was too little too late. The guy was literally the reason her father was dead, after all. So when she received a phone call one morning from Sam Winchester telling her Castiel was dead and he’s sorry and he just thought she should know because maybe she’d like to be there for the funeral, she wasn’t sure what to think.





	Communication Breakdown

**Author's Note:**

> All right, so the prompt I was given at 2am was "Claire finds out Cas died. Go." 
> 
> For the purposes of this fic the nephilim kid just kinda up and fucked off.
> 
> Update: I finally learned how to properly format things on AO3. Enjoy the newly formatted and easier to read version. Please don't forget to leave kudos if you liked it, and comments feed my soul! :D

So here’s the thing, Claire has long since accepted that her father, James Novak, is dead. And sure, Castiel tried to fill his shoes and play daddy to her but in her opinion, it was too little too late. The guy was literally the reason her father was dead, after all. So when she received a phone call one morning from Sam Winchester telling her Castiel was dead and he’s sorry and he just thought she should know because maybe she’d like to be there for the funeral, she wasn’t sure what to think.  


Because, okay, it was her father’s body and she hadn’t had that to bury all those years ago when she first lost him. But it wasn’t exactly James Novak’s body anymore, was it? It hadn’t been for a long time. Castiel had even been human in that body and there wasn’t a trace of the man who once tucked her in every night and braided her hair for school every morning left in it.  


But it was also Castiel, and despite his shortcomings as a father figure she did have a respect for him. Kind of. Okay, so she thought he was a dork and could really use some social lessons but still, he was there for her when it counted, even if she kind of threw it in his face. Therefore, she found herself telling Sam that she’d be there, and the next thing she knew she was checking out of her motel and driving down the freeway at damn near illegal speeds.  


On the way, she found herself wondering how Dean was holding it together. She knew he and the angel were close, probably closer than either of them realized. Sam had sounded shaky and distracted on the phone, but he seemed like the type to be able to pull himself together and do what needed to be done. She wondered if Sam had plans to burn the body… She probably shouldn’t let him do that. After all, Castiel had come back from the dead before, right? Why should this time be any different?  


It wasn’t until she arrived that she saw what was different. They had moved the body already, but she could still see the clear outline of broken, dishevelled wings burnt into the ground. Her mind flashed images at her of another dead angel in a parking lot, with spreads of fully fledged burns on either side. Must be a memory of Castiel’s, she concluded. He had only possessed her for a short time when she was much younger, but every now and then she would remember something. He had kept much from her, and looking back now she realized he must have been trying to protect what he could of her innocence.  


Okay, so maybe she was a bit more attached to Castiel than she initially thought. She felt a hand on her shoulder as she stood, staring at the place he died. She turned her head to see Dean, and he did not look good. She might have teased him about the red rims around his eyes in any other circumstance, but not about this. If anything was going to break Dean Winchester, she thought, it would be this, and oh god she was not prepared for a broken Dean Winchester.  


“Do we really have to burn him?” Claire asked, her voice coming out much smaller than she intended. She glanced over at the pyre Sam was building.  


“’Fraid so.” Dean replied, and his voice seemed just as small. “He deserves to go out like a hunter.”  


Something about his voice told Claire that he was repeating someone else’s words, Sam’s probably, and that he didn’t exactly believe them himself.  


Her suspicions were confirmed when Dean had somehow conveniently “lost” all their lighters an hour later. After an argument, and the most aggressive display of emotion (mostly anger) she’d ever seen from Dean, they eventually all agreed to take Castiel back to the bunker before burning him.  


Claire followed the Impala all the way back to Kansas, wondering whether Castiel was going to spontaneously sit up in the back seat and cause the boys to crash. She was just glad Dean insisted Castiel would ride in the Impala.  


They stopped for dinner at the half way point. They found a cozy little diner in the middle of Nowhere Special, parked, and made sure Castiel was fully hidden under lots of blankets and gear so no one would get suspicious. Inside the diner they were seated by a young waitress with a bold nametag that read “KELLI – HOSTESS”  


She had barely gotten the words “Can I get you anything to drink?” out of her mouth before Dean was standing up again and walking towards the door. Sam chased after him and Claire was left to apologize to Kelli and inform her that she’s sorry, but it seems her uncles had not in fact decided where they would like to eat yet. Sam explained to Claire later that Dean was probably upset because Kelly Kline was the beginning of the chain of events that lead to Castiel’s death. Claire scoffed, before promptly finding Dean and smacking him upside the head.  


“Stupid reason to walk out of a diner!” She chastised, and he indignantly insisted he just wasn’t hungry.  


Sam and Claire got burgers to go, Dean complained twenty minutes back into their journey that he was hungry.  


The bunker welcomed them with a cold familiarity that felt comforting and foreign all at once. A few things were out of place, obviously there had been a fight here recently that hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned up. There were some patches of dried blood and Claire stubbornly chose not to look at them. She made a beeline for the library and pulled a trench coat from her shoulder bag. She’d pulled it off Castiel’s body before they loaded him into the car. It wasn’t the same as her father’s coat, she noted. But it was sweet that Castiel has still chosen to emulate his vessel’s style even after he was gone.  


She slipped her arms into the sleeves and pulled it tight around her. She felt a bubble of untapped emotion in her throat and forced it down, she wasn’t going to cry over this she reminded herself. She heard footsteps behind her and immediately shoved her hands into the pockets as she turned.  


“Looks good on you.” Sam tried, and she gave him a weak smile.  


“Take it off.” Said Dean, and she noted a look in his eyes she couldn’t quite determine. He seemed pissed, but profoundly sad at the same time. The request came out like an order but there was a desperate plea underneath it. She scowled at him as she slipped her arms out of the sleeves. She was about to hand it over to Dean when she felt something heavy hit her hand.  


With her brow furrowed she pulled a rectangular piece of plastic from the pocket. “What’s this? Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx…”  
Dean launched forward and snatched it from her hand.  


“You made him a mixtape?” She asked, and Sam raised his eyebrows.  


“Seriously Dean?”  


“Shut up.” Dean held the tape tight in his hand, his knuckles turning white against the black plastic.  


“That’s… really sweet. And kind of gay.” Claire was poking an already pissed off dragon, she knew, but God help her she could not resist.  


“Fuck off, Claire.”  


“Did you ever tell him how you feel? Or did you just expect him to figure it out from… “Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx”” Air quotes may have been used, sue her.  
Dean’s jaw was set tight and he was audibly silent.  


“Are you serious? All that time he spent doubting himself… Trying to be better, trying to do the right thing… Trying to impress you Dean, and you never once told him you love him back?”  


She was met with a stone-cold glare that could cut like a knife.  


“And now he’s gone, and he’ll never know. But hey, at least your fragile masculinity is still in tact, am I right?”  


“Claire…” Sam’s warning tone should have stopped her, but she was flat out mad now. This was beyond teasing, she was pissed. Why the hell was it so hard for these idiots to understand that bottling their shit up did no one any good and only resulted in pain and regret and borderline alcohol poisoning?  


“Must feel nice to know that your best friend was suffering every day trying to gain your approval but you refused to show any sign of actually Giving a Fuck. Sorry that emotions aren’t your thing dickhead, but newsflash, some people need to be told they’re loved!”  


She really didn’t have that much to go on, but from her encounters with the Winchesters previously and her brief conversations with Castiel over text through the years she knew enough to know one thing for certain; there was far too much left unsaid between Dean and Castiel that would now go forever unspoken.  


Unless the angel somehow found his way back to life at some point, and even then she was convinced Dean would never actually admit his feelings out loud.  


“I tried to tell him, all right? Several times! And I wish I could take it all back, Claire. Because you know what happens to people Dean Winchester loves? They all die. All of them. So you can fuck right off!” He pushed through to the hall and stomped away. A door slammed a moment later and Claire bit her lip.  


“Too far?” She asked.  


“…I’ll say.” Replied Sam.  


~*~  


In his room, Dean was pacing. Then he was laying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Then he was pacing again, and so on and so forth. He was dealing with a multitude of emotions he hadn’t had to deal with for a very long time, and a few emotions he’d never had to deal with before at all. They had agreed to burn Castiel’s body tomorrow and he just wasn’t sure he could handle that. He pulled a few books out from his nightstand and began flipping through them. Maybe he could find a way to bring Castiel back before tomorrow.  


Unlikely, he knew. But he had to try. He wasn’t ready for life without Castiel.  


He ignored the first knock at his door.  


He told the second to fuck off.  


And then the knocking just wouldn’t stop and he was forced to get up and open the door. “What?”  


“I’m sorry.” Claire said.  


Dean grunted and went back to his desk. Claire took the open door as an invitation and followed him in.  


“I mean it, Dean. I shouldn’t have said those things…”  


His silence spoke volumes. He was trying to ignore her, but she could see the stone exterior beginning to break down.  


She sighed, “It’s not your fault that he died, you know. You have this thing where you blame yourself when people around you get hurt, but the fact is people get hurt everyday, and people die every day. It sucks when it’s someone close to us, and it sucks more when we didn’t get to say everything we wanted to before they went. But no one has ever been killed from being loved. At least, not to my knowledge…”  


Dean’s mouth twitched.  


“Look, Dean. I’m going to give you some advice…” She cleared her throat. “Drop the hero act, okay? You’re not saving anyone by bottling up your crap and drowning it in alcohol, which by the way makes you smell like a back alley in Vegas. Let yourself feel things, I promise you’re not going to get murdered or inadvertently murder anyone if you let your self tear up occasionally.”  


Dean narrowed his eyes, but she continued. “I’m saying this as your friend, and because when we get Castiel back I don’t want to be dancing around this shit anymore, ya feel?”  


“When…?”  


“Well yeah. I mean, Sam’s not the only one great at research here…” She held up the stack of books he’d previously not noticed under her arm. “Now, let’s find a way to get that stupid dork back to Earth.”  


If Dean shed a few tears that night, Claire didn’t mention it later when asked.  


But she did volunteer the information freely to Castiel merely hours after his return.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. There it is. My wee hours of the morning insomnia induced attempt at writing something half decent. Please leave kudos so I didn't stay up this late for nothing ;-;


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